Irfan Ahmad, Max Planck Institute
This article is part of the Democracy Futures series, a joint global initiative between The Conversation and the Sydney Democracy Network. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.
This is the second...

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On 21 November 2017, Ukraine will mark the fourth anniversary of the Euromaidan revolution. Almost four years ago people gathered in the main square of Kyiv under the flags of

Event Details

On 21 November 2017, Ukraine will mark the fourth anniversary of the Euromaidan revolution. Almost four years ago people gathered in the main square of Kyiv under the flags of the European Union for democratic values and against the kleptocratic regime of then President Viktor Yanukovych. Three months later, over a hundred activists were killed, Crimea became part of the Russian Federation and eastern Ukraine was torn apart in the war. For the fourth anniversary of Euromaidan, Olga Oleinikova will discuss the three most significant political and social gains and three corresponding deficits for the democratic development of Ukraine after the Euromaidan revolution. The seminar will conclude with a discussion around Ukraine’s vision for its democratic future.

Olga Oleinikova is a Scholarly Teaching Fellow at the University of Technology Sydney’s School of Communications. Olga also holds the position of Honorary Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney, and acts as a Director of Ukraine Democracy Initiative, co-hosted by the University of Sydney and the University of Technology Sydney. Her two main research projects are: one on diaspora and democracy in Eastern Europe and one on outmigration from Ukraine to Asia-Pacific following the collapse of Soviet Union. Both projects are mixed-method studies examining the challenges, performance and prospects for democracy in Eastern Europe and Ukraine.

Event Details

War is destructive and deadly. The First World War is often thought to have shown that war is futile. Yet the Second World War, although even more spectacularly horrible and deadly,

Event Details

War is destructive and deadly. The First World War is often thought to have shown that war is futile. Yet the Second World War, although even more spectacularly horrible and deadly, lent itself to being represented as a ­ or indeed The ­Good War, the war in which good triumphed over evil, freedom and democracy over genocidal racism and totalitarianism. This apparent success in making the world a better place through war has since provided not only a trope through which war can be justified but ­more than that ­ a moral imaginary that powerfully suggests the appropriateness or even need to wage war for the Good. This has been visible in contemporary Western war as ethical war. From Kosovo to Iraq, the West has seen itself as delivering a better world to populations suffering from oppression, genocide and other serious human rights abuses, while protecting freedom and democracy at home. We are trapped in a dilemma, however, if what we do risks killing those we ostensibly seek to protect. This paper argues that this long-standing and powerful dilemma requires us to move beyond existing ways of conceiving the ethics of war to understand war as a politics of ethics.

Speaker:

Maja Zehfuss, Professor of International Politics at University of Manchester, UK

Chair:

James Der Derian, Professor and Michael Hintze Chair of International Security; and Director of the Centre for International Security Studies.

Event Details

What does a renewable energy future look like?
In partnership with Sydney Ideas.
Global energy markets are in process of rapid change and transformation. Over the last decade, renewable energy technologies

Event Details

Global energy markets are in process of rapid change and transformation. Over the last decade, renewable energy technologies like solar and wind have become dramatically cheaper and now challenge the economics of traditional fossil-fuel energy systems. Added to this, the catastrophic implications of human-induced climate disruption are forcing governments to seriously embrace decarbonisation as demonstrated in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. However, the US Government’s recent rejection of clean energy legislation and proposed expansion of coal, oil and gas highlight how the old fossil fuel order is not giving up without a fight and there are countervailing trends evident in current political battles over energy and climate. This Sydney Ideas event will bring together three expert speakers on the potential for renewable reinvention and a global green shift. What are the opportunities and challenges Australia and the world face in the coming decade as we try to kick our fossil fuel habit and embrace a cleaner, more sustainable energy future?

Chair: Professor Christopher Wright

Panel:Professor John Mathews is a leading scholar of the greening of capitalism and the role that China and East Asian countries play in this process. In September 2014 he and his collaborator Dr Hao Tan had an article published in Nature, on the theme of renewables, energy security and China. This interest in greening of business stems from a decade and more of scholarship focused on the competitive dynamics of international business, the evolution of technologies and their strategic management, and the rise of new high technology industries, especially their creation in East Asia through strategies of technology leverage and the management of technology diffusion. His work now focuses on the emergence of the ‘green economy’ and the transition to renewable energies, and the institutional changes needed to provide industrial capitalism with genuine long-term sustainability.

Emma Herd is Chief Executive Officer at the Investor Group on Climate Change (IGCC). Prior to IGCC, Emma spent 15 years at Westpac Banking Corporation where she had a range of roles across carbon finance and emissions trading, ESG Risk assessment, public policy and sustainability strategy development. Emma has participated in a number of key public forums, government and industry bodies relating to climate change and the environment. Emma is a Non-Executive Director of the Carbon Market Institute and a member of the Cornerstone Capital Global Advisory Council. She holds a Bachelor of Asian Studies (Thai) Hons.

Professor Tony Vassallo holds the Delta Electricity Chair in Sustainable Energy Development in the Faculty of Engineering & Information Technology. Although a physical chemist by training he can masquerade as an engineer when required. He is a passionate advocate of the need to transition to low carbon energy sources, and in particular, the development of battery energy storage to facilitate very high levels of renewable generation. He teaches sustainability and researches energy storage.
A past President of the Australian Institute of Energy, he is also Director of the Centre for Sustainable Energy Development in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering.

Event Details

Dissidents. Rebels. Resisters. Protesters have the moral gumption to stand up for what is good and right… right?
Our world and its people are full of competing needs, desires and ideologies.

Event Details

Dissidents. Rebels. Resisters. Protesters have the moral gumption to stand up for what is good and right… right?

Our world and its people are full of competing needs, desires and ideologies. As the saying goes, one person’s freedom fighter is another person’s terrorist.

From Pauline Hanson’s burqa stunt to same-sex marriage postal survey boycotts and movements as large as Black Lives Matter, protests can be highly visceral. As images of burning torches in recent weeks have shown us, protesters can exploit visual symbolism for great emotive impact – whether good or bad.

So when is protest the most ethical action to take?

Some question the effectiveness of protest as a tool for change. How much has Occupy Wall Street influenced the banking and finance sector, for example? Are “no platforming” protests really creating a more tolerant society?

Given large street protests, even peaceful ones, carry a risk of disintegrating into chaos, what are the conditions for organising one?

Perhaps there are more effective ways to make change happen and protest should be reserved for a last step when negotiations fail. Perhaps some issues just demand we come together to express raw and unedited dissatisfaction en masse. Or does the risk of violence require us to hold back from standing up for our values and principles publicly?

Join us as we rally together to explore the Ethics of Protest with crowd favourite, Michael Salter.

SPEAKERS

Michael Salter is a criminologist focused on the intersections of violence, culture and gender. He teaches in these areas at Western Sydney University and explores online protest in his book, Crime, Justice and Social Media.

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5 days agoby sydneydemocracyKellie Tranter and Professor John Keane close the discussion at War and Democracy: Who Decides? this evening on #internationaldayofpeace@sydney_uni Thanks to the Australians for War Powers Reform, Gillian Triggs, Paul Barratt and Kellie Tranter!

Event Details

On 21 November 2017, Ukraine will mark the fourth anniversary of the Euromaidan revolution. Almost four years ago people gathered in the main square of Kyiv under the flags of

Event Details

On 21 November 2017, Ukraine will mark the fourth anniversary of the Euromaidan revolution. Almost four years ago people gathered in the main square of Kyiv under the flags of the European Union for democratic values and against the kleptocratic regime of then President Viktor Yanukovych. Three months later, over a hundred activists were killed, Crimea became part of the Russian Federation and eastern Ukraine was torn apart in the war. For the fourth anniversary of Euromaidan, Olga Oleinikova will discuss the three most significant political and social gains and three corresponding deficits for the democratic development of Ukraine after the Euromaidan revolution. The seminar will conclude with a discussion around Ukraine’s vision for its democratic future.

Olga Oleinikova is a Scholarly Teaching Fellow at the University of Technology Sydney’s School of Communications. Olga also holds the position of Honorary Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney, and acts as a Director of Ukraine Democracy Initiative, co-hosted by the University of Sydney and the University of Technology Sydney. Her two main research projects are: one on diaspora and democracy in Eastern Europe and one on outmigration from Ukraine to Asia-Pacific following the collapse of Soviet Union. Both projects are mixed-method studies examining the challenges, performance and prospects for democracy in Eastern Europe and Ukraine.

Event Details

War is destructive and deadly. The First World War is often thought to have shown that war is futile. Yet the Second World War, although even more spectacularly horrible and deadly,

Event Details

War is destructive and deadly. The First World War is often thought to have shown that war is futile. Yet the Second World War, although even more spectacularly horrible and deadly, lent itself to being represented as a ­ or indeed The ­Good War, the war in which good triumphed over evil, freedom and democracy over genocidal racism and totalitarianism. This apparent success in making the world a better place through war has since provided not only a trope through which war can be justified but ­more than that ­ a moral imaginary that powerfully suggests the appropriateness or even need to wage war for the Good. This has been visible in contemporary Western war as ethical war. From Kosovo to Iraq, the West has seen itself as delivering a better world to populations suffering from oppression, genocide and other serious human rights abuses, while protecting freedom and democracy at home. We are trapped in a dilemma, however, if what we do risks killing those we ostensibly seek to protect. This paper argues that this long-standing and powerful dilemma requires us to move beyond existing ways of conceiving the ethics of war to understand war as a politics of ethics.

Speaker:

Maja Zehfuss, Professor of International Politics at University of Manchester, UK

Chair:

James Der Derian, Professor and Michael Hintze Chair of International Security; and Director of the Centre for International Security Studies.

Event Details

What does a renewable energy future look like?
In partnership with Sydney Ideas.
Global energy markets are in process of rapid change and transformation. Over the last decade, renewable energy technologies

Event Details

Global energy markets are in process of rapid change and transformation. Over the last decade, renewable energy technologies like solar and wind have become dramatically cheaper and now challenge the economics of traditional fossil-fuel energy systems. Added to this, the catastrophic implications of human-induced climate disruption are forcing governments to seriously embrace decarbonisation as demonstrated in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. However, the US Government’s recent rejection of clean energy legislation and proposed expansion of coal, oil and gas highlight how the old fossil fuel order is not giving up without a fight and there are countervailing trends evident in current political battles over energy and climate. This Sydney Ideas event will bring together three expert speakers on the potential for renewable reinvention and a global green shift. What are the opportunities and challenges Australia and the world face in the coming decade as we try to kick our fossil fuel habit and embrace a cleaner, more sustainable energy future?

Chair: Professor Christopher Wright

Panel:Professor John Mathews is a leading scholar of the greening of capitalism and the role that China and East Asian countries play in this process. In September 2014 he and his collaborator Dr Hao Tan had an article published in Nature, on the theme of renewables, energy security and China. This interest in greening of business stems from a decade and more of scholarship focused on the competitive dynamics of international business, the evolution of technologies and their strategic management, and the rise of new high technology industries, especially their creation in East Asia through strategies of technology leverage and the management of technology diffusion. His work now focuses on the emergence of the ‘green economy’ and the transition to renewable energies, and the institutional changes needed to provide industrial capitalism with genuine long-term sustainability.

Emma Herd is Chief Executive Officer at the Investor Group on Climate Change (IGCC). Prior to IGCC, Emma spent 15 years at Westpac Banking Corporation where she had a range of roles across carbon finance and emissions trading, ESG Risk assessment, public policy and sustainability strategy development. Emma has participated in a number of key public forums, government and industry bodies relating to climate change and the environment. Emma is a Non-Executive Director of the Carbon Market Institute and a member of the Cornerstone Capital Global Advisory Council. She holds a Bachelor of Asian Studies (Thai) Hons.

Professor Tony Vassallo holds the Delta Electricity Chair in Sustainable Energy Development in the Faculty of Engineering & Information Technology. Although a physical chemist by training he can masquerade as an engineer when required. He is a passionate advocate of the need to transition to low carbon energy sources, and in particular, the development of battery energy storage to facilitate very high levels of renewable generation. He teaches sustainability and researches energy storage.
A past President of the Australian Institute of Energy, he is also Director of the Centre for Sustainable Energy Development in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering.

Event Details

Dissidents. Rebels. Resisters. Protesters have the moral gumption to stand up for what is good and right… right?
Our world and its people are full of competing needs, desires and ideologies.

Event Details

Dissidents. Rebels. Resisters. Protesters have the moral gumption to stand up for what is good and right… right?

Our world and its people are full of competing needs, desires and ideologies. As the saying goes, one person’s freedom fighter is another person’s terrorist.

From Pauline Hanson’s burqa stunt to same-sex marriage postal survey boycotts and movements as large as Black Lives Matter, protests can be highly visceral. As images of burning torches in recent weeks have shown us, protesters can exploit visual symbolism for great emotive impact – whether good or bad.

So when is protest the most ethical action to take?

Some question the effectiveness of protest as a tool for change. How much has Occupy Wall Street influenced the banking and finance sector, for example? Are “no platforming” protests really creating a more tolerant society?

Given large street protests, even peaceful ones, carry a risk of disintegrating into chaos, what are the conditions for organising one?

Perhaps there are more effective ways to make change happen and protest should be reserved for a last step when negotiations fail. Perhaps some issues just demand we come together to express raw and unedited dissatisfaction en masse. Or does the risk of violence require us to hold back from standing up for our values and principles publicly?

Join us as we rally together to explore the Ethics of Protest with crowd favourite, Michael Salter.

SPEAKERS

Michael Salter is a criminologist focused on the intersections of violence, culture and gender. He teaches in these areas at Western Sydney University and explores online protest in his book, Crime, Justice and Social Media.